Whoever comes to ask about me in malicious glee—about the blow that has struck me—or who simply gloats without asking,
knows that ordeals have brought forth from me a free-born man, patient before the convulsions(1) of those earthquakes of fate;
when gladdened he never grows arrogant, nor is he cowed by any disaster when it descends upon the humble, self-effacing soul.(2)

He later advised the Caliph al-Muqtadir, and the counsel prospered: from the estate’s yearly revenue he set aside ninety thousand dinars for the Two Sanctuaries and the frontier garrisons, and he created a special bureau for these endowments, naming it the Dīwān al-Birr (Bureau of Charity).(3)

The ḥadith scholar Abū Sahl al-Qaṭṭān(4) said: “I was with him when he was exiled in Mecca. We were overtaken by fierce heat and were on the verge of perishing. One day he performed ṭawāf (circumambulation of the Kaʿbah), then threw himself down and said, ‘I beseech Allah for a drink of ice-cold water.’
“Within an hour a cloud formed, thunder rumbled, and a heavy hailstorm fell; the young attendants gathered jars of it.
“The vizier was fasting, and when it was time to break the fast I brought him cups of various syrups. He began by serving the neighbors, then he drank, praised Allah, and said, ‘Would that I had asked for forgiveness!’(5)”

The vizier was humble; he said, “I have never worn a garment that cost more than seven dinars.”(6)

Judge Aḥmad ibn Kāmil related: “I heard the vizier ʿAlī ibn ʿĪsā say, ‘I earned seven hundred thousand dinars, of which I disbursed six hundred and eighty thousand in charitable causes.’”(7)

I say: some of his higher-level chains of transmission have reached me through the Amālī of his son.